


Soft Hearts

by cjr09



Category: Eldemore
Genre: a fun childhood scene between cally and his now very dead brother, imagine an au where seraphina decided that soulmates were determined based on like stuffed animals, it's very late don't like think about my tags too long, that you could choose, uhhhh hinted at pairings but no actual ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 04:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11844066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjr09/pseuds/cjr09
Summary: Väeril takes his youngest brother to meet the mystic caravan at the edge of the kingdom....Cally can't get into too much trouble, can he?





	Soft Hearts

The first time Cally gets to see the Mystic's caravan, he's _enthralled._

 

There are colorful bits and baubles floating _everywhere;_ Cally’s eyes are wide with awe as he tries to take in as much of it all as he can, turning in slow circles.

 

The people, the creatures, the clothes, the everything- it's all so _new._

 

Väeril is trying to tell him something, to explain something to him, but Cally's already tuned him out, tugging on the hold his brother has on the back of his tunic so he can explore.

 

Väeril rolls his eyes, and with put-upon sigh he releases his brother; the young elvian is off like an arrow from his bow, and he smiles, softly, but not without a roll of his eyes. "Kids,” he snorts, turning to look at his bonded Elkrin over his shoulder, “Was I ever this much trouble?"

 

His doe pauses before she goes after Cally, apparently _specifically_ so she can fix her bonded with an unimpressed stare.

 

Väeril holds up his hands in surrender. His doe spares him no more of her time, and walks quietly after the bouncing Caladaer.

 

He spares the retreating figure a small smile. He doesn't know what he did to deserve a brother that his Elkrin would side with _before her own bonded._

 

Whatever it was, Väeril's pretty glad he did it.

 

* * *

 

 

Caladaer is absolutely _enthralled_ by the human's wares.

 

 _Everything_ catches his eye. Whether it's a creature for sale, a shiny knick-knack hanging from a string, or even simply a collection of feathers, Cally's fixated on it all, trying to lock it away in his memory or compare it to something he’s seen in his own kingdom. He walks slowly and reverently through the arranged carts, barely dodging both person and creature alike- too small to be in the direct line of sight of most of the travelers.

 

Then Cally spots a wagon with numerous, colorful _things_ he's never seen before, never seen anything even _similar_ to before, and he stops _dead._

 

There's an elderly human at the front of the wagon, seemingly fixated on sewing up something in her lap that Cally couldn’t quite see, but otherwise, this end of the caravan is surprisingly barren of both creature and Mystic. He spares the woman a curious glance, but the colorful, odd creature-looking _things_ draw his attention again.

 

Cally shuffles slowly towards the wagon, but when the woman shows no signs of even looking up from her sewing he all but plasters himself to the side of the wagon, standing on the very tips of his toes to see the first row up close.

 

With a final glance over his shoulder, he reaches up cautiously, holding his hand out and turning it like he would when faced with a new, unfamiliar Elkrin, presenting it for the Elkrin-like thing to smell. When it- a doe, he notes distantly- doesn’t respond, he turns his hand again and pets gently behind her soft ears. He makes a small, gasping noise of wonder.

 

Cally doesn't know what these are, but they're his new _favorite_ thing. Even above Vaeril on his favorite-things list; at least when his brother was being mean and not letting him hold his arrows, or stay up late during festivals, or not letting him have any sweet things. Then, at least, these were his _favorite_ things.

 

A soft chuckle from his left catches his attention, and he turns his wide-eyed stare to the elderly woman at the wagon's front, guiltily pulling his hand back from the Elkrin-thing’s head.

 

"Never seen a plushie before?" The woman asks, purple eyes twinkling. She doesn’t speak unkindly, but with a hint of gentle, motherly teasing in her voice- Cally relaxes minutely.

 

He shakes his head slowly in response, voice- or at least common human language- failing him. His eyes drift back over to the plushies with a new kind of reverence, committing their name to memory; _a plushie,_ he thinks, _these are plushies_. Absently, he pets between the Elkrin plushie's ears, careful not to pull on her fur.

 

The woman smiles, a small thing that Cally can mostly see in her bright eyes, even though he’s still mostly watching her from the corner of his own. She sets her needle and thread in her lap, sitting up straight and wincing at the protesting pops of her back.

 

"Well, it's just not right for any child to go through life without having at least one stuffed toy!" She declares, nodding sharply in agreement with herself, looking between the Elkrin doe toy Cally's been petting and the one in her lap, still obscured by her hands. Cally's attention snaps completely to her, ears pointing straight up and angled unflinchingly, eyes wide all but holding his breath to see what she has to say next.

 

"Tell you what," she says with a small laugh at his eagerness, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees; she holds the plushie she'd been working on out towards Cally. It's a small dire wolf plushie that looks like it's seen better days- its white fur is fluffed up randomly, broken up with dark brown-ish squiggles down one arm and side, like someone had drawn on it with an inked quill. The ears are a dark almost-black in color, with a small golden crescent-moon sewn into the front of the right ear that stands out against the white fur of the inner ear. The eyes are bright, honey-gold buttons; a small, tattered red scarf is tied loosely around its neck. A small pink line is slashed carelessly across the bridge of the dire's nose, the fur gone from the spot and making the surrounding stick up awkwardly in response. The tip of its tongue pokes out of its mouth, like a puppy that hadn't _quite_ learned to control it, and the pale pink gives notice to the two abnormally sharp fangs it possesses. It seems thin, like there wasn't enough stuffing to fill it properly; its limbs and ears flop down, limp, instead of supporting its weight like the others on display. It only has one tail, unlike the two a dire wolf should have, but the one it does fluffs up in every direction, black at the base fading to white at the tip; like someone had sewn it on backwards in relation to the ears.

 

It seems sad, somehow. Cally frowns, unsure of what to do; he wants to reach out and give it a pat, sit for a while like he would with any distraught creature he’d come across, hum a tune his brother had taught him until they’d calmed down.

 

"Between this one, and that Elkrin doe there, which one do you prefer?" The woman asks, and the young elvian tilts his head in question, surprised.

 

"I don't know," Cally answers, honestly, "I haven't gotten to know either one of them- I can't say I like one more than the other."

 

The woman laughs lightly, smiling at him more openly now. She sits up straight again, sparing a small, fond smile for the dire toy, setting it carefully so the front of its paws just flopped over her knees. "Alright, that _is_ a fair point," she concedes, looking over her wares with a keen eye before looking back to the young Elvian.

 

"I'll share with you a secret," she says, dropping her voice into a faux whisper. Cally leans towards her regardless. "These plushies are all very special- they're all one of a kind, and someday, a very special someone will take them home. But sometimes, a plushie doesn't ever get picked," Cally's ears pin down at this, and he makes a wounded, gasping noise, "and while that can be alright, some of these prefer to be on their own; though some of them don't, and they become very lonely. Anyone might choose to pick up any one of them, but the one you pick is yours; maybe not forever, you might even get a different one eventually, but you won’t ever forget them and they won’t ever forget you."

 

Cally listens intensely as the woman leans back in her chair, huffing out a breath with a small wince as her back protests the action. "No matter which one you choose, a plushie only really becomes yours with a lot of time, and a lot of love.

 

"All this to say," she gestures between the doe and the wolf, "Whichever one you feel more drawn to, whichever one you think you could do best by- it doesn’t matter. Simply choose wisely."

 

Cally chews on his bottom lip, looking between the doe and the wolf rapidly as he thinks. The doe is better made, and would probably last longer; the doe's pretty, any Elvian Cally knows would be lucky to have one like that as a companion- Cally knows a lot about Elkrin from Väeril, and Väeril has the prettiest doe in the whole world. The wolf, on the other hand, looks like it's falling to pieces; a third or fourth-hand hand-me-down toy that had already been through the ringer once or twice and come out with questionable success.

 

Cally scrunches up his nose, flicking his ears down in concentration.

 

He doesn't want _either_ of them to be lonely. The doe's pretty, and strong, and would probably make someone a great plushie someday, but the wolf-

 

Cally gets the feeling that the wolf would be waiting a long, long time for someone else. The wolf has more _personality-_ like Väeril always says about him, when one of their other brothers or parents catches Cally doing something he shouldn’t be.

 

Something deep within him is repulsed by the thought of this wolf ever being lonely, especially if Cally can do something about it. Cally thinks maybe he and the wolf can be friends- they can have too much personality _together._

 

He's reaching out almost before he recognizes he's doing it.

 

"That one," Cally says, barely restraining himself from making ‘grabby hands’ and shifting anxiously from foot to foot, because now that he's chosen he needs to make sure that the wolf knows its loved, and that they can be friends, and that neither of them’ll ever be lonely again and he needs to let it know _now._

 

"Careful, now," she says, giving a small, sad, knowing smile when Cally all but snatches the wolf from her and cuddles it close to his chest, "That one'll need a lot of love."

 

"'s okay," Cally mumbles, half to the woman and half to the toy, speaking into the top of its head and one floppy ear, "'ve got enough love for like, three _whole_ plushies."

 

The woman laughs again, a little louder this time, almost like she's amused by some private joke, "Yes, I suppose you do."

 

Cally makes a humming noise of content, and the woman makes a shooing motion with her hand, taking her needle and thread from her lap as she sorts through her remaining fabric.

 

"Why don't you go show him off to that brother of yours?" She suggests, and Cally looks up with a smile and a gasp- yes, Väeril had to meet Cally's new friend, _now._

 

"Thank you!" He calls to the woman, finally finding his words, wolf tucked safely under one arm as he waves frantically with the other before he turns and all but _sprints_ to go find his brother.

 

* * *

 

 

Cally almost crashes into Väeril’s legs when he finds his eldest brother, rocketing toward him from between two wagons; Väeril jumps visibly as the young Elvian rushes at him, crouching down to be on eye level with his brother; said brother already talking at a million miles an hour in his haste to show Väeril his new friend.

 

"Cally, we've been over this, take breaths between each sentence," Väeril teases lightly, having assured himself that his brother hadn’t been hurt in any way. He shoots a curious glance to his bonded doe as she quietly steps from behind the treeline and into step at his side, but his bonded, _as usual,_ pays him no attention and instead bends her head to sniff at Cally, huffing out a breath that whips Cally’s whispy red hair into wild curls.

 

"Look at my new friend!" Cally bursts out, holding up the wolf above his head, hands clamped around the toys’ middle; the head flops forward, limp in his grip, bright button eyes gleaming in the afternoon sun.

 

Väeril’s ears pull back, brow furrowing as he puzzles over Caladaer's new acquisition- Cally probably hadn’t stolen it. _Probably_. "Where'd you get that, Cal?" He asks, lightly, shooting a glare at his completely unaffected Elkrin out of the corner of his eye- the doe was supposed to keep Caladaer _out_ of trouble, not let him get _into_ it.

 

"From a nice old woman who was selling a bunch of them, she's right over-" Cally stops as he turns, ears flicking down as he looks around, trying to remember the way he came.

 

"Um," he starts, "I'm not sure." He hadn’t thought he’d gone _that_ far into the Mystic’s caravan- he should still be able to see the way to the cart, shouldn’t he?

 

Väeril gives an exaggerated sigh, rolling his eyes. Cally sticks his tongue out at him in response.

 

"Well, if she was selling them, I'd have been happy to pay her," _if you really love it that much,_ Väeril adds to himself, eyeing the stuffed toy with a critical eye.

 

Cally doesn't seem to notice his brother’s silence, wrapped up in apparently trying to cuddle the stuffing out of the odd wolf, burying his face in the white fur between its shoulders.

 

"You do like the weird ones," Väeril says with a fond, exasperated breath, reaching out and ruffling the hair between Cally's stubby antlers until he shrieks, delightedly, for Väeril to stop.

 

Väeril pulls his best 'who, me?' face, holding out his hand for Cally to hang onto as he stands up again, pointing to the wolf with his free hand, "What? I'm just making you match!"

 

"You're just jealous he's my new favorite," Cally says, grabbing onto Väeril’s hand and cuddling the wolf close with the other, pinned between his side and his arm so the toy can look up at Väeril, too. Väeril gasps in mock outrage, putting his free hand over his heart.

 

"Are you telling me that a scruffy, scrappy wolf overthrew me as the king of your heart?"

 

Cally grins, unrepentant. "Yep!"

 

Cally names the wolf _Scruffles._

**Author's Note:**

> hey i'm really tired, ignore my nonsense
> 
> cally can have ALL the plushies umbrella shipping is real
> 
> This is an excerpt from a really big fic i'm working on that ended up not fitting the full thing! So smaller except fic instead
> 
> Hey! Like my stuff and wanna support me and what I do? [Buy me a coffee!](http://ko-fi.com/cjwrites) That'd be super cool of you.


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